All posts tagged YA Fiction

With J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter film series officially at its end and the final “Twilight” saga wrapping up soon as well, movie studios are on the lookout for new young adult-driven tomes to adapt. One project in pre-production at Summit Entertainment that is candidate for franchise-dom is Veronica Roth’s “Divergent,” a dystopian tale about a girl who chooses to leave her family and join a new “faction,” or different branch of society.

Roth, who only graduated from Northwestern University last year, first came up with the idea for the story while driving between Carleton College, her first school, and Northwestern, where she transferred. She imagined someone jumping off a building, not for any self-destructive reasons, and that became a germ of a idea for “Divergent,” which does feature a large Pit within the world of the Dauntless faction. Finding the concept fascinating, she wrote 30 pages before selling her story aside, thinking it silly. Luckily, she picked it back up four years later and a trilogy was born. Read More »

Is there an invisible line in the sand when it comes to writing young adult novels? That was one of the questions I had when I decided I was going to write YA. My fiction for adult readers tends to be steeped in violence, nothing gratuitous, or at least nothing I consider gratuitous, but I knew a softer touch was going to be required if I was going to write a book for teenagers.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where that touch was going to come from. I like to write about dark things–in my stories, bad things can happen to good people, and often do. Discovering whether or not that kind of subject matter would be appropriate for a younger audience became the goal. Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.